Komon And The Clouds

Komon sat alone on his roof, listening to the soft chirping of birds and in the very far distance… The soft murmur of youkas undead defence. While the concept of the undead was disgusting, the sound was actually surprisingly soothing. The voices tended to blur together in unison. Komon leaned back placing his back against the roof of his apartment and gazed up into the clear blue sky of the hidden cloud. He had recently become a chuunin and had wanted to tell his brother Komori, but it seemed his twin was nowhere in sight. He was alone with nothing but himself and the clouds in the sky.

“Maybe I should start learning a new technique, as a chuunin it’s probably essential for me to keep up my training” He thought to himself as he continued to rest. “But what should I learn?” He thought. Earth, Lightning, Shuriken Jutsu, they all seemed to be what he was good at, but what if he reached outwards, what if he learned more. Intrigued at where this thought process was leading him he looked back at his training with tayo. In it he had learned a technique that he hadn’t taken advantage of since, it was a rather uncommon technique which would give Komon a sense of unpredictability. The super beast mimicry skill, which allowed him to bring drawings to life.

Surprisingly Komon hadn’t utilized this technique in months, he had learned something and failed to follow up on it so that he could effectively use it in combat, this was clearly a mistake that needed to be corrected, he needed to start drawing again, but what should he draw, what should he bring to life. As he finished the thought something happened that almost felt like it was an answer to his question. Still looking at the sky he watched as a hawk glided across the blue sky of the hidden cloud blotting out the sun for just a few seconds before soaring out of view.

“A hawk”

He thought to himself before propping his back off of the roof by pressing down with both hands. Then kicking up before landing firmly on his feet. So it was settled, he had a plan for the day. Now he just had to grab his gear. He jumped off the roof and twisted his body to grab his window seal as he was falling, using his upper body strength to pull himself into his room instead of landing on the streets of Kumogakure.

Once in his room Komon walked over to his nightstand and picked up his headband, gleaming in the sunlight. He then fastened it around his head as he continued to walk towards the mirror on his closet door. Inspecting himself to make sure the headband was wrapped securely he tied it into place letting it rest without the assistance of his hands firmly on his forehead, identifying himself as a shinobi of kumogakure, and concealing his curse mark.

Then he went over to his drawer, in it he would find the shinobi painter set he had bought rather recently but had yet to use, and strapped it to his left arm, his right hand was his writing hand and he would need it to draw, so the painter set logically had to be on the opposite one. Once it was in place he would take the finger brush and place it in his weapons pouch, there was no need to wear it until he got to the training grounds or it would just get in his way after all. Deciding he was ready he activated his byakugan to look once more around the house, but sighed when he saw his brother wasn’t in the building. He guessed he would have to tell him at a later date, and turned towards his window that he often used as an exit, it was much quicker than the door after all. As he faced it he leaped out and did a flip onto the ground level before sticking the landing and raising his hands into the air much like a gymnast would.

As he merged into the everyday life of the kumogakure streets he would make his way through a small group of people that seemed to be blocking the road, they were a nuisance preventing him from getting to his destination and lacked the common courtesy to get out of his way, so he just kind of shoved through them and heard rather rude remarks from behind him. “Whatever” he thought to himself as he continued on without looking back.

The training ground was beginning to appear over the horizon and he would take note of the clearing in the trees that he was so used to studying and practicing his ninjutsu in, the flat boulder that he often rested on gleaming in the sunlight. It took him a couple of minutes to reach it, and when he did he sat firmly on the boulder before taking a deep breath, before he began to think on how he would go about the training, with tayo he had learned to make lines pop out of the paper but he had never attempted to make anything like this, hell he wasn’t even that talented as an artist, so he figured first he should practice drawing a hawk, so that he could do it fast in combat.

Deciding that it was probably a good course of action He reached into his back pocket where a small hand sized sketchbook rested, he had bought it a couple days ago for when he knew he’d eventually try and develop this technique. And then pulled the finger brush out of his weapons pouch, a normal brush probably would have sufficed but he was going to have to get used to this tool eventually and decided now was as good a time as any, besides it would be counter productive to practice with a tool he never planned to use.

Now that he had that part down it left really only one missing piece to the puzzle, a hawk preferably, considering that was what he intended to bring to life, he had seen tayo do the same and knew it would be possible. Alas there was no hawk in sight, so Komon was going to have to find and capture one. It sounded like a significantly more fun task than sitting on a boulder and trying to draw from memory, so his hunting instincts kicked in and he made his way to the forest hopping up and pulling himself onto a branch.

From here he would activate his byakugan and begin to scour the woods for wildlife, looking around he saw plenty, most of which appeared to be squirrels due to the size and shape of their chakra nature, but in the sky he could see several birds about half a mile out, wanting to get close so that he could capture one he activated his lightning javelin technique to enhance his speed while jumping from branch to branch.

The soothing clacking of his sandals against the wood was a sound he had come to enjoy, it was an audible representation of how far he had come as a shinobi, the speed and ferocity it moves at was worthy of a chuunin, which he now was. As he ran he looked to the sky to see if he was any closer to the birds only to discover he was only about halfway there. The sky was empty above him and as he looked at the empty blue sight, he began to wonder if his parents would be proud of him, he can't imagine they’d approve of what he had done in that second to last exam, a child, twins, an infant, a helpless puppet.

The exam had truly been frightening to say the least, it may have even left him scarred, but he’d be damned if he’d ever admit it. He was lost in thought as he finally heard the majestic screech of the birds in flight above him, there they were, he thought to himself, but they were much too high in the sky to reach without mortally wounding them, he guessed that was the purpose of their design, safety in height. And he had no intentions of killing a bird just to learn a jutsu, so instead he’d climb higher into the tree, intending to get into range so that he could use the temporary paralysis technique and catch the bird as it fell.

As he did so one of the hawks glided past him, less than a couple feet away from his face and the two made direct contact. This was all Komon needed, less than a second of eye contact and the hawk had been completely incapacitated. It spiraled downwards as it lost control of its own wings, and Komon almost felt bad for it, but he knew it would be fine as he jumped forward and caught it before landing on a lower branch on the tree opposite to him. Now he had his drawing dummy, and it was time to get back to the training ground.

He hopped off the branch he was currently standing on deciding that the rocking motion of jumping from branch to branch may injure the bird that was now in his care and took special care to safely land on the ground bringing no harm to the thing while walking safely back to the clearing in the woods where his boulder rested. As he did so he would study the features of the elegant creature, it had shiny brown fur, and round beady eyes, but its most distinct features where its talons and its beak. They were a distinctive yellow and formidably sharp, much like a ninja tool.

By the time he had finished inspecting the poor thing the clearing was in his line of sight, and his sketch pad still rested on the rock. “Alright little guy, let's get to work, the sooner I draw you the sooner you get to go home.” he would say to the bird despite it not being able to understand him before propping him in a standing up position on the rock in front of him.

Komon himself would lay in the grass while staring intently at the hawk, drawing every feature of its body, several times over, the first couple of times it started off looking like nothing more than scribbles, Like he said earlier he wasn’t a naturally talented artist, but through trial and error and a very long and grueling process he seemed to be able to make an almost cartoonic version of it. He would practice this method repeatedly ensuring that he had it down, and once he had drawn the same thing seven times, decided that it was time to let the bird go free, back to its home in the sky.

He thanked it for its help, again despite it not being able to understand him and released the paralysis technique, before watching it fly off into the sky. Leaving him with nothing but himself and his ninja tools in the clearing, he looked at his sketchpad again, looking over the individual strokes and details he had designed, it was basically a formula, a recipe if you want, for his ninjutsu.

Now determined to try out the ninjutsu he walked over to the boulder where his finger brush attachment was waiting, the device was relatively expensive and designed for super beast mimicry users like himself, it would automatically dispense ink into the brush and react to his chakra so that he could infuse the ink for the technique, which was of course an essential step to the jutsu. He had only done this with straight lines before so assumed that it would be significantly more difficult with an actual shape. And he was right.

As he painted the several strokes onto the page he noted that it took a level of chakra control that exceeded that of even his chidori techniques. He was essentially controlling a living being and it was taking an immense amount of his concentration to do so, as he finished the drawing he watched it pop off of the page and as it did so a malformed hawk appeared, which made no sense to Komon as the drawing had been one of his best yet, then he noticed that certain lines were stretched further than he had drawn and designed. And he had added too much weight to the hawk, watching it fall over onto its side.

As it fell it exploded into a burst of ink and covered him in what he had drawn. “Perfect” he thought to himself as he smeared the ink off of his face and thanked his lucky stars he hadn’t been wearing invictus.

He wondered why the bird had been so malformed in comparison to his drawing, and after several ideas decided that it must have been due to an uneven distribution of chakra, he had to have outstretched chakra to certain parts of the bird, making its center of mass completely off balance. “Alright so I’m going to have to pay a lot more attention to where I send my chakra” He thought to himself as he activated his byakugan to assist in the process. With his byakugan active he could now see the faint glow of chakra around the brush attached to his finger, the ink glowing with his magnificent blue chakra.

He rose his brush before gently gliding it across the shinobi painter set strapped around his arm, leaving the soft imprint of his liquid ink on the firmly in place paper. With a mere seven quick strokes he had drawn the hawk, ensuring that it looked like… well a hawk, and when he confirmed that fact he released his hand from the chakra infused ink allowing it to expand off the paper, here he would begin to manipulate his own chakra he had placed in the ink ensuring that he stretched it into the proper proportions.

He looked forward with pride at the site in front of him, a solid honest to god hawk drawing in front of him, it stood tall at what Komon guessed was at least twelve feet, due to the fact that it towered above him, and had a wingspan that was even longer, it could easily hold him and another passenger and still fly. But he wanted to make sure it could so he started to put the theory to the test, and jumped up onto the bird, which didn’t seem to mind. And it better not, Komon was its creator after all. As he fastened himself onto its back he directed his chakra to make the wings of the bird flap and for the bird to propel itself forward. Komon was startled by the sudden burst of speed that it displayed however, and frantically grabbed at its neck, this caused the bird to fly straight upwards into the sky, with Komon’s legs slipping off the back and nothing but his arms wrapped around the bird's neck keeping him from falling to certain death.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH” is what the villagers from below where probably hearing as Komon began to himself back up and level the bird back to a position that wouldn’t try to kill him. “This is gonna take some practice” He thought to himself as he took some laps around the village.

As he did so he looked at the village from a new perspective, from the ground you could only see little sections of the village at once, but from here, from here you could see the entirety of the havoc. The endless lines of the undead surrounding the rotten exterior of the village, as you went further in the middle section of the village became much more presentable, youkas work of course, he had obviously wanted to make the village more liveable for the actual citizens of the hidden cloud, and as you got in even further to where the shinobi and the raikage himself lived, the village appeared to be almost normal, bright and beautiful. Komon took comfort in the fact that he and his twin brother Komori had become shinobi, the two of them had a much nicer apartment than they would have before the fact.

As he zoned back into the real world he was noticing just how fast he was flying, it was a decent speed for a ninjutsu, and he wanted to test it out more, dipping the bird downwards and falling with gravity he would increase his speeds at a rate he wasn’t sure was completely a good idea considering his horrible take off attempt, but hell he had to get some training in somehow he still had plenty of daylight. So he continued to plummet with his arms and legs ensuring he kept his place on the bird as the wind pressed against him as if trying to detach him from his own ninjutsu, and the ground continued to grow nearer as he headed right towards the streets of Kumogakure.

He pulled up at the last second soaring just seven feet above the ground as he passed his own apartment, and went down the same street he had taken to get to the training grounds, the same group of people who had been blocking his road earlier that morning still standing there. However this time he wouldn’t have to push through them, he smiled a devilish grin as his bird soared mere inches above their heads the force of his birds wings knocking a few of them over with pure air as he did so. Smiling as he looked behind him he thought to himself that it served them right for how he had treated him earlier.

The wind still blowing back his hair Komon continued to fly low in the narrow streets of kumogakure but this time using his byakugan to make sure nobody else resided in the streets, there was no need to terrorize civilians that had done nothing to him with his newfound jutsu after all and after about three minutes he found his way back to the clearing where his ninja gear rested, now all he had to do was land. Using his chakra control over the hawk and manipulating the wings to expand outwards and catch air to slow their descent the painting landed gently on the ground.

Now safe on the terrain of the earth Komon released the ninjutsu, he had done enough training for one day after all and the sun was setting. There was no need to waste unnecessary chakra on a jutsu that served no purpose for the time being, but he was glad he had learned it, to have this skill in a battle would surely be a great asset, he didn’t think he had met anybody capable of flying other than the jounin tayo, and this would certainly set him apart from the rest of the village shinobi. Pleased with himself for his progress he began to walk home, longing for sleep.

WC: 3196/3188 25% max stat discount
Requesting: SBID: Hawk

Bumpidy